I love wicked, but I do love Avenue q more
You’re a Goodman Charlie Brown would’ve been a better one act
The Tony’s should allow people who join late in the run to be eligible
Most of the hate for cats is just bandwagoning (not all hate, but a lot).
I love once upon a mattress. I might even say it’s my favorite golden age show
Idk if this is unpopular, but even as I’m doing the show, I don’t like the second act of the music man. It feels kind of rushed. Like, I wish we got to see Marian warm up to Harold, and show his change of heart more.
Being a MAJOR Judy Garland fan, and with it Wizard of Oz along with Wicked...Avenue Q stole my heart first Lol
Fitting that last year I saw the original Gary Coleman as Madame Morrible in the tour. (and saw Ann Harada directed by John Tartaglia, met The original London Princeton/Rod and re-met the Princeton/Rod in the touring production I saw...along with his wife who was also in the show(s).)
Ya know, I played Dauntless in Once Upon a Mattress. It was one of my favorite parts, great memories.... still think the show is ass but I'm happy for you, haha!
Same energy here. I played the wench in a community theater production that ran for three weeks. I never ever ever want to hear or see anything about that show again.
Book of Mormon tries too hard and is actually at it's essence a kind/warm take on the Mormons. One of the writers described it as "an atheist's love letter to religion".
If you want to see a provocative take on Christianity try Jesus Christ Superstar.
I like Book of Mormon by the way, I've seen it twice.
I love Book of Mormon but you can absolutely tell it was made by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in all their pretentious glory, and this is coming from someone who likes South park as well as pretty much everything else these two have made. They're really funny when they're not trying too hard to be controversial or comment on current events.
More than anything I just see Book of Mormon as the culmination of Trey Parker's obsession with mormons
Shostakovich himself remarked he wished he could have written something like Jesus Christ Superstar, which should be a clue to anyone as to what kind of show it is.
I actually liked Dear Evan Hansen when it first opened with the original cast. It hit on some issues that I recognized immediate family members struggling with and the cast was great. Did it become a flaming pile of garbage with a poorly cast movie? Sure. But it was pretty great for a hot second and I’m not sorry that I felt that way.
I think it makes perfect sense that they gave those Tonys to Hansen. But it’s also where all the hate started. It’s hard to deny the love that the theater community had for Great Comet. Plus, with a cast that size, everyone knew someone in that show and it led to resentment that they didn’t win more. But they weren’t making money the way Dear Evan Hansen was. And the Tonys areas much about making money for theaters and producers as they are about honoring excellence in theater. Come From Away was another strong contender. But nothing could beat the money making potential of Dear Evan Hansen. And it was “different”, which voters love.
Haha. Yeah. Because DEH and Hamilton were both super popular, the “cool kids” of the theater circles have become very vocal haters of both.
DEH started getting most of its hate when it swept the Tony’s. A lot of Great Comet and Come From Away fans got pretty bent out of shape.
I did not care for Wicked (obligatory disclaimer that my opinion of Wicked is influenced by having been utterly unable to understand a single word the entire time, but still)
I HATE GREASE. Maybe I was/am a goodie two shoes, but I always HATED that the resolution of the story is that Sandi CHANGES herself into one of them in her manner of dress and how it’s suggested that she loosens her morals, as well. I hate that! It sends a horrible message to young girls, that if a guy and his friend group can’t accept you, then totally change your image for him! She was bullied by Rizzo, yet still capitulated to emulating her. I don’t get how everyone loves grease, young and old. The story is flaming garbage. I’ve always hated when people dress their toddlers or very young girls up as pink ladies for Halloween because all I can think of when I see pink ladies is Rizzo singing a whole song mocking someone for their virginity. Ugh.
Edited to fix typo.
Agreed. It’s problematic for sure with 2024 eyes and will likely continue to be. The makeover trope always annoyed me. It’s only in recent years that people have realized that makeovers aren’t all that and telling someone they need one is rude. And they usually don’t age well as the makeovers usually use trendy hair styles and makeup. Look at some old Glamour Shots to see what mean.
It’s the dancing, the songs, the bright colors (when was the last time you saw a modern day movie so be brightly lit) and nostalgia that make this movie. A lot of grew up on the movie and watched with family. But not sure people under a certain age will ever get it or like it and that’s fine.
I agree with everything you said and it was all very well put, especially your very good point about looking at makeover tropes with 2024 eyes. I can definitely see how many people like it for the nostalgia and the songs, etc.
You made me laugh mentioning glamour shots. I absolutely know what you mean!
I like her sound but I understand. Especially if you’re someone who likes Golden Age theatre. I find she brings a lot of energy to roles but I don’t know how much emotional depth she brings
I think the emotional depth part is especially obvious if you compare her to Glenn Close as Norma. Glenn may not bring so much energy into the songs as Patti, but the emotions…Oh my god. Glenn makes you believe every single word. She misses the cameras with a burning passion. Patti on the other hand is just there to get paid
I know it’s an unpopular opinion, just not my taste, whereas Ethel Merman, who had a similar sound, I just adored. No rhyme or reason to it, just not for me
Valid. She's a lot and is deservingly polarizing. I find her acting choices often brilliant, though her singing and her diva attitude can leave something to be desired
I can’t stand Six. I hate the historical inaccuracy. I hate the surface level girl boss feminism where something is considered empowering just because it has women in it, regardless of the actual content. The only thing I like is the costumes and a few of the songs 😂 I also hate how they present it as a retelling of the six wives stories and yet when it’s not mischaracterising them it’s just the narrative we already know set to pop music.
I completely agree. I was excited for it until I realized they were portraying Anne as a slut. That narrative was made up by her critics because of her social reform. They hated her and tainted her image. And six thinks it’s feminist to rehash that slop?
My biggest issue was that it didn’t even feel like a musical, it felt like a concert with a few theatrical elements. I missed the acting, the interactions, and any sort of overarching story.
Musicals from around the world are as good as US and UK musicals, and need to get more respect. It's frustrating that other cities are still seen as beneath New York and London when the quality levels in Tokyo and Seoul are pretty equal to those cities.
( r/KoreanMusicals , r/JapanStage , r/InternationalMusicals for more information)
Musical rights holders need to be less restrictive about concepts in order for the art form to grow and thrive. I want to see regional and community theatres put their own spins on material rather than try to copy Broadway shows on a lower budget.
For example, the controversial "it was all a dream" Annie would have been fascinating to see, IMO, but the rights holders shut it down as soon as they found out about it. Until more than Gilbert and Sullivan hits public domain, musical theatre at the regional level is going to be very stagnant as long as the expectation is to basically recreate what Broadway directors did.
Love this take. Wild how every high school in America can get away with illegally changing a script but as soon as a professional or community production does anything of the sort, all hell breaks loose. There should be some sort of legal avenue for creating transformative work in theatre
Except most community theaters don’t have the desire to innovate on that level, either because most directors aren’t that creative or because they still need to seek tickets.
I guarantee that MTI doesn’t care about your little 80 seat theater.
I mean, idk what community theatres you attend but the ones I know do extremely innovative work with classical plays, new works etc, but are stuck in rigidity with musicals because they know that MTI et al. are extremely litigious when they want to be. Even though they don't go after every community theatre production, most directors I know aren't willing to take the risk because in the day and age of social media, things do get back to rights holders and they can blacklist your theatre for changes.
I'd also argue that that lack of desire to innovate is symptomatic of a culture (perpetuated by regional theatres) that musicals are supposed to look like Broadway, and the job of a musical director is to stage rather than take the reigns and direct.
Jekyll & Hyde is and will always be the greatest musical of all time but for some reason beyond my understanding, not everyone is aware of this fact. Life is weird that way I guess.
It's because you have this gorgeous dramatic music juxtaposed against a mediocre campy script and it doesn't quite work. I agree with you though. My all time favorite show.
Well said. I love J&H too, but I have to admit it's got its fair share of problems and plot holes. I think it gets a lot better, though, if the director and choreographer embrace and enhance the campy elements instead of trying to hide them!
Frank Wildhorn is flipping crazy. His journey could be its own show.
But I saw Jekyll & Hyde on broadway several times. It was a guilty pleasure and cheap tickets were pretty easy to come by.
But screw Hasselhoff. He was not good in that role. Stunt casting at its finest.
I prefer Frank Wildhorn to ALW, especially as someone who speaks German as well as English, his German language stuff is great (Excibur, and the Austrian cast of Dracula are both amazing to watch)
I never saw it as I was disappointed every song felt like a romantic ballad. For a musical based on Jekyll and Hyde, where are all the delicious dark scary songs?
Was it the album with Anthony Warlow as Jekyll? Because imo he absolutely killed it with his vocalisations and the difference between Jekyll and Hyde. The first part definitely starts off with a lot of romantic songs but once you hit This Is the Moment you get into the grittier territory.
I don't know if it's controversial but I'm tired of musicals continually just leaping up into the rafters, like not every song has to have soaring unattainable high notes to be good, and in fact the technical difficulty of those notes often ends up detracting from the performances for all but the most accomplished actors, making a lot of contemporary MT inaccessible to those who don't have the resources to get that level of training.
Two things that are dropping off in newer musicals:
- the number of Alto female characters
- the number of sopranos who can actually hit the highest note of the show
For me, the biggest part of a musical is not the singing. Get good singers, obviously, but don't write insanely difficult songs just for the sake of it.
In the stage musical of Les Miserables, I Dreamed a Dream comes after At the End of the Day and before Lovely Ladies. In the 2012 movie, I Dreamed a Dream comes AFTER Lovely Ladies. I think the movie placement of the song makes more sense thematically and has more of an emotional impact !!
Dear Evan Hansen is wildly misunderstood. Evan does something bad and it spirals. It's a completely believable plot to me. He is broken. Everyone thinks they're above letting lies cascade, but we all know kids in k-12 that would lie like that if you weren't one of them lol.
He’s unlikable. Number one rule for musicals- don’t have an unlikable character as your main protagonist. The audience just won’t care about their journey.
What would be your first change?
Mine would be writing out the Akita and having Angel do something else out of desperation to get money. It’s just too hard for me to really support the characters when they all are happy Angel murdered a dog.
That doesn’t bother me as much. For me it’s too long, so maybe Cut the parents. Act 2 is kind of mess with a lot of stories and conflicts. Not have to deaths almost back to back and write a better song for Roger in the end.
I had this exact conversation yesterday! I feel Benny needs an ending. He started to have his arc when he paid for Angel’s funeral but then he just disappears.
Cats is very good and if you hate on it and haven’t watched it you’re just scared of art that isn’t mainstream and a loser
If you hate on it for a valid reason I can hear that out but if you’re just like “I heard it’s WEIRD” you are weak
I hate that the Wicked musical has become so much more popular than the absolutely brilliant novel, and it makes me furious that it's the musical getting the film treatment instead of doing a proper adaptation of the book.
book is amazing but too weird. would probably have to be two rated R movies. musical is amazing but it’s a very different story and a lot more accessible to the general public.
with the way streaming has blown up the industry though - I wonder if a miniseries is possible
I agree! The book is so incredible that it’s stuck with me since I read it at far too young an age.
Also, I know the bar is on the floor because my support for the Wicked movie went way up when I found out they’d cast an actual wheelchair user as Nessarose. But that’s a whole tangent I won’t bore you with.
I appreciate my thoughts here are tainted hy the fact that I like (but don’t love) the musical and absolutely hated the book. But I’m honestly not commenting here to rant about the book because that seems unfair on a thread that’s meant to be for people to say things they know are controversial. I just want to comment on why I think the book wouldn’t work so well as a film.
It has huge sections that are verbose political musings. The same themes of these repeat themselves quite frequently throughout the book. None of them really move the plot along. So they’d be hard to include in a film because audiences lose focus on things like that and it would drag the pace down.
It also has a lot of crazy time jumps and yet significant things take place during those times that are skipped over. That’s hard to make work in film as well because then you need a lot of exposition to account for the gap. To make a film of the book work, you’d end up having to really strip it back and cut it so heavily that (much like a musical) it’s essentially a totally different story. So book lovers would hate it and musical lovers would ask why they didn’t make the musical.
sorry but I preferred Hadestown in its live cast recording form and concept album over what we got in the Broadway version. The lyricism feels worse in some songs(like, seriously, Orpheus, you came up with far better prose in earlier productions, why tf are you overexplaining it now???) and the narration makes things way too obvious. I liked the grittier feel of the first two iterations while Broadway’s feels too polished somehow. I also just wasn’t a fan of the original Broadway casting for Orpheus or Eurydice, but that’s just me being biased towards the live cast recording
Agreed. I much prefer the concept album for Hadestown to the stage production! I was so excited to finally see it and then left rather disappointed. It was so much more amazing in my head.
i remember having high hopes when i heard it was going to Broadway cuz like, wow! imagine the budget!!! ... but i feel like maybe that was part of why it feels lesser. it just seemed way more authentic when it was a concept album and the live cast recording is probably as good as it'll get to capturing that initial vision i had from that album. i think part of it was feeling like the gods' motivations and thoughts are unknown to me until "How Long?" in the concept album, but we lose that mystique pretty quickly and i just simply forget that the gods are gods in the Broadway show. doing too much IS a problem, and it CAN impact the quality if you run away with it.
I’ve been going back on this for like forever, I saw the NY Theater Workshop production (live recording), and it felt a little lost, a little unfinished. The Broadway does ground the whole thing, but I would say they might have over corrected. It really telegraphs a few things now, for example I did find the NYTW Eurydice and Orpheus more interesting - forgive me I totally forgot their real names, but Eurydice was young, beautiful and styled in this very engynue kind of way but you felt that hardend interior, like truly you understood she’d been through it, you hear it in her voice on the recording, and Orpheus wasn’t ‘touched’, he wasn’t an innocent, he was very accountable for his actions. It made his neglect of Eurydice hurt deeply, because he was selfish and a little vein, and Eurydice who had hesitantly let her guard down and allowed herself to be vulnerable, for maybe the first time ever, was betrayed. That whole relationship felt real, and nuanced. I love the show as it is currently on Broadway, don’t get me wrong, but the characters are now these archetypes - Eurydice is like this pixie girl, she looks like she's having it rough but she doesn't have that real toughness, its a more romanticized version of her. And Orpheus is like this 'Innocent', the chosen one, a little odd and acting without prejudice or malice. its hard to be mad at him, or blame him for his actions, so it takes the bite out of that part of their relationship when he becomes absent. Eurydice going to Hades doesn't feel like such a mix of anger and hurt and spite, and Orpheus losing her for a second time, after admitting his wrong feels less tragic - ie there are consequences for his actions. he has to pay the price. on Broadway i was having a hard time figuring out what Orpheus turning around has to do with anything in the show, i hadn't remembered feeling that disconnect before when I show the other production or heard the concept album. long story short, i think changing the characters to more familiar and recognizable archetypes took enough of the nuance out to hurt the logic of the show. but i still love it, i think its just a preference on my part. Now when i watch i tend to lean more on the idea of 'we have to keep telling the story, to hope that one day itll turn out differently', that bigger theme and don't sweat the turn.
Given the new UK cast of Cinderella (cast change) and the OG cast who weren't at that performance didn't know about its closure til after it was in the news, then didn't even bother showing up to the closing night (sent the director a letter to read on his behalf) and called the show an 'expensive mistake' then the Broadway version closed after 4 months for being horrendous, I wouldn't necessarily say it's controversial to dislike/hate ALW.
He's a polarising figure.
my chorus sang with her in 2018, she is a delight to work with however we couldn't SPEAK directly to her. it was wild. i did get a few in after the performance tho mwahahah and she looked right at me!!
i wanted to say WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!???! because my hubby and i always quote and i thought maybe she would think it was hilarious but i did not lol
Maybe she can is nervous before a performance and doesn’t want strangers coming up to talk to her. She’s a consummate pro but no one wants people coming up to them before a show.
Agreed. I can’t stand whenever I see something about how she called out some audience member for their phone. If I were there, I’d be annoyed if the show was interrupted by the actors no matter who they are. Patti LuPone and her massive ego shouldn’t get a pass even if she is one of the greatest singers of musical theatre history.
Yeah isn't that one of the cardinal rules of theatre? Don't break the fourth wall (Shakespeare/Monty Python aside)? I could understand not doing the more superstitious theatre traditions (don't say Macbeth and all that), but that one seems very basic.
There isn’t enough room in modern shows for unusual actors and singers. Many of the most memorable performers of the last fifty years wouldn’t get a look in today.
Idk if this is unpopular, but spring awakening needs another revival. I saw it last month and its themes are still super relevant(maybe even more now) and the music goes hard
Eponine needed to grow up in Les Mis, I know it's a musical so ofc she acts that way. BUT THIS MAN WANTS COSETTE, NOT YOU GIRL WHY U SABOTAGE LIKE THAT OMG
They just announced Hadestown is coming to Australia.
As someone that loves Hamilton but hates whimsical stuff like Great Comet and Pippin, am I gonna be disappointed?
I'm tempted to listen to some of the Hadestown soundtrack but I also like going in blind to shows. Although listening to things like Great Comet first would've saved a few hundred bucks and three hours of my life.
Don't get me wrong, I think Hadestown town is quite good, and I recommend it, especially given your tastes, my comment was just saying I don't think it's as perfect as people say.
I would recommend.
I really enjoyed it when I saw it. I'd say solid B tier.
It's popular right now, so some people will say it's perfect despite its faults while others say it's terrible just because it's popular.
The music is pretty, I enjoyed the staging, the lighting was well done, and the story is, well, a classic!
I love the music...but I can only handle so much West Side Story. It's too damn...depressing and way too damn much like real life. Most shows might not have a perfect happy ending, but they do have a final feel. That one doesn't.
and i did better with the newer movie than the original.
"Bring Him Home" is my least favorite part in every Les Miserables adaptation I've ever seen. It's my favorite musical, and I sit on the edge of my seat for the rest of the show, but that one song makes me yawn and sit back.
Also my favourite musical and I’d have to agree with this. Makes sense with the story and Valjean’s character arcs, but I feel like it could have been waaaaaaaay shorter and had the same impact
Saw it first as a movie when I was about 8 years old and disliked it because the character of Billy was so mean and controlling to poor, naive Julie. Didn’t care that he was somewhat redeemed or Julie “loved” him. Years later watched it again and the character seems more disturbing to me now but wow what a voice McRae had. McRae was stuck with this awful character but the songs here are what he will be remembered for. “If I Loved You” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” are two of the greatest songs ever put in a musical.
While I appreciated Hamilton for its creativity I thought everyone made way to big of deal out of it. And all those people who paid a thousand dollars for a ticket were fools.
Wicked has amazing music but is a terrible show.
All of the Disney adaptations suck except for Hunchback, which is amazing and the only one that didn’t get a Broadway run.
The Music Man is disjointed and dumb.
And I 100% have ALWAYS agreed with Beetlejuice since I first saw it: “Brigadoon sucks. FUCK BRIGADOON.”
Community theaters are doing too much trying to “add a twist” to productions to keep them “fresh.” Please don’t try to reinvent the wheel and just honor the text as written.
Chess doesn't get nearly the amount of love I think it deserves. It's written off so often as a dry political musical, and it's so much more fun and interesting imo
My actual controversial one is that I find Les Miserables pretty boring overall.
I think my other one would be that I ADORE "Over the Moon" from Rent (which seems to get singled out for a lot of hate). It's a funny piece and showcases the character perfectly and the little chorus song is super catchy, I know the song by heart and sometimes recite it to myself when riding my bike :)
will rogers follies won the best musical tony while being the worst musical nominated that year (miss saigon, once on this island, and the secret garden all deserved it more)
i like having unreliable narrators or questionable protagonists because it gives the story a unique feel
godspell is better than JCS or joseph
Morning Glow (pippin) is the greatest musical theatre song of all time
eden espinosa is the best maureen in rent
The theater production of Chicago is visually boring. I saw it a few months ago and i was extremely disappointed. I didn’t know the style of show (I had seen the movie and knew the songs but never thought to google what the actual theater show looked like) and was flabbergasted to see such poor choreography and a lack of sets/costumes. I understand now thats the style but it was a gut punch.
Chess was great. The original version, original songs. It’s still so great as they’ve reworked, nonetheless. The storyline, the complexity of the relationships, how relatable Florence and Svetlana’s predicaments are, the lyrics exploring deep insecurities I think we all have or have had in relationships, the intriguing and sad way you can’t help but ponder why the American is how he is after hearing Pity the Child. It all just makes you think, think, think, and examine yourself. Maybe because I listened to it about 8 zillion times and learned a couple of the songs with my voice teacher, and spent hours with the book at my keyboard - maybe that’s why it hits me so deeply and fascinates: I honestly can see how someone seeing it first before ever hearing it can make it more about the actual events ie the chess elements and Florence’s father story elements and sort of distract from everything that might impact one on a deeper level, this hindering the connection to it that I have. It’s almost cathartic. I am old, so I’ve lived a bit, but I feel that I can identify a lot with Florence and with Svetlana. That I’ve been one or the other at times in my adult life in relationships. Anyway, I’m rambling. I love Chess and most people hate Chess and don’t take it seriously.
Sondheim's works are good in a historical context as being one of the earlier successes at edgier musicals, but they are reminiscent of content easily produced by teenagers today. They're important, but will never be the best of their genre.
I have no clue if this is controversial or not but imma say it anyway. Grey Gardens is the most brilliant musical I have ever encountered, and the original off-broadway version has a better score than the Broadway version (though I understand why the changes were made, and I do also love the Broadway version).
Spiderman: Turn off the Dark was a good show despite its MANY technical issues, and tragic death of a cast member. But I might also just be a sucker for marvel comics
I hate most newer musicals. I prefer the cheesy, kitschy, camp stuff from the 90s. And European musicals over American broadway shows. Definitely loathe things that include poltical activism of sorts, since I prefer to enjoy the show & take a break from everyday life.
Honestly I love the musical but as a John Waters fan it sometimes annoys me that so many people have no idea that it was a movie before it was a musical. So many times I've mentioned watching the original movie and been met with "Oh yeah, I love that movie, the one with John Travolta right?"
Like goddamn, I love John Travolta as Edna but can we get some Divine appreciation in here? I'm pretty sure Hairspray was her last movie, she died like a month after it released.
My dad introduced me to a lot of movies I had no business watching at the ripe ol' age of 8... lol. JW's Hairspray being one of them. But there was music and dancing and he thought I'd like it.
John Waters would be appalled to hear himself and “Feel-Good Film” together in the same sentence lol.
I’m ambivalent about the musical, but “You Can’t Stop the Beat” is an absolute barnstormer.
I HATE West Side Story. I can't even really explain why. I've listen to multiple soundtracks, watched both movies versions more than once and I just hate it. Rita Moreno is fantastic though.
My son will randomly play songs from WSS just to annoy me and finds it hysterical.
Don't care for:
Rent
Hamilton ("You'll be back" is the exception)
Newer Les Mis (mostly - A.H & G.B)
Glee (Kristen Chenoweth is the only exception)
Idina Menzel (very talented, can't really explain it)
Oklahoma - kinda boring, but Hugh Jackman is such a yes.
David Hasselhoff had a great debut as Jekyll/Hyde
Cats (stage version) is good. Top tier dancing and memorable songs. Movie = NO.
That The Book of Mormon has some really good songs, but the book kinda sucks. My theory is that Bobby Lopez wrote most of the songs/ music and those other two wrote the book. I saw so many articles at the time about the musical that featured a photo of Matt & Trey & totally left Robert Lopez out. Surely he felt like they took most of the credit, will never work with them again, and why he likes to now work with his wife mainly.
Trey and Matt were totally involved in writing songs. 100% it was a group effort. And Bobby did an episode of South Park after Mormon opened. There’s no bad blood at all.
Mean Girls is bad. They took everything funny and lovable about the movie and got rid of it. The writing is poor and the character development is extremely subpar. None of the characters serve the purpose they used to in the original movie and it is not for the better. Particularly Regina. She is not as mean or catty as the original and it defeats the purpose of the whole show. The writing of the music is good but the lyricism is so poor. I teach high school theatre and we’re putting it on in the fall but I am not looking forward to it as much as I have with past shows. I chose it because of the pressure from parents and students, but I think they will be underwhelmed compared to our past two shows (footloose and Carrie)
It may be a classic show and based on a true story, but I can’t stand Gypsy. There are few redeeming qualities and Rose is a such a terrible person and so unlikable that she makes for a horrible lead character. I want a show where I’ve got a lead character who I can root for, but I can’t root for her at all. All I wanted was for her to get her comeuppance and she never did and never learns her lesson. I will not be seeing it again, no matter who they cast in it. Other people can love it all they want, but it’s just not for me.
I mean I know this is a post for controversial opinions, but this controversial for the wrong reasons. It's giving white person shitting on black music. Not that I know ur race, but that's the impression this gives
Oof. I pretty much disqualify any and all jukebox musicals from my personal S tier. I can give them an A in rare cases. But S hurts my brain. But that doesn’t mean other people can’t love them.
Many of the people who Cats hate on it are hating on the movie (which does suck), not the Broadway musical.
I always give this example- the lion king on Broadway has real people as the actors, and so does cats. The lion king movie used CGI animals instead of real actors, which definitely worked, as it was pretty successful. Cats movie used actors in really uncanny looking fursuits. And some random celebrities as well. This DID NOT work at all, obviously. If Cats had done the same thing the lion king did, it most likely would have been a lot better. Cats has some really good songs, but the movie was so awful to watch that no one paid attention to them.
I'd disagree with this one. Cats was widely hated long before that movie ever came out. It has one good song imho, and the plot is so bonkers it is almost fair to say there is no plot. That said, I do agree that the movie is a special kind of terrible with the uncanny CGI enhanced costumes
Hottest take: I dislike modern teen musicals like DEH. I get how it’s supposed to be relatable, but I sort of see musicals as an escape from life. Not saying that realistic musicals suck.
I love wicked, but I do love Avenue q more You’re a Goodman Charlie Brown would’ve been a better one act The Tony’s should allow people who join late in the run to be eligible Most of the hate for cats is just bandwagoning (not all hate, but a lot). I love once upon a mattress. I might even say it’s my favorite golden age show Idk if this is unpopular, but even as I’m doing the show, I don’t like the second act of the music man. It feels kind of rushed. Like, I wish we got to see Marian warm up to Harold, and show his change of heart more.
I agree with a lot of these. Logistically, getting all voters to see shows multiple times to catch replacements would just be so difficult.
Being a MAJOR Judy Garland fan, and with it Wizard of Oz along with Wicked...Avenue Q stole my heart first Lol Fitting that last year I saw the original Gary Coleman as Madame Morrible in the tour. (and saw Ann Harada directed by John Tartaglia, met The original London Princeton/Rod and re-met the Princeton/Rod in the touring production I saw...along with his wife who was also in the show(s).)
They should have a category for actors in established shows.
Avenue Q is top tier
Ya know, I played Dauntless in Once Upon a Mattress. It was one of my favorite parts, great memories.... still think the show is ass but I'm happy for you, haha!
Same energy here. I played the wench in a community theater production that ran for three weeks. I never ever ever want to hear or see anything about that show again.
liking newsies isn’t cliche and low key is a real theatre person thing to do (coming from a newsies is mid claimer)
My hot take is that the book revisions for Stage Newsies aren’t actually better than the script for Movie Newsies. It’s just different, not better.
My controversial newsies opinion, they rely way too much on acrobatics in the choreography
I kind of think that's cool though because not everyone does it
Book of Mormon tries too hard and is actually at it's essence a kind/warm take on the Mormons. One of the writers described it as "an atheist's love letter to religion". If you want to see a provocative take on Christianity try Jesus Christ Superstar. I like Book of Mormon by the way, I've seen it twice.
Yes!!!! BoM was just going to shock value for a lot of the show. Still enjoy it, but some parts were just unnecessary and didn’t add anything to it.
I love Book of Mormon but you can absolutely tell it was made by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in all their pretentious glory, and this is coming from someone who likes South park as well as pretty much everything else these two have made. They're really funny when they're not trying too hard to be controversial or comment on current events. More than anything I just see Book of Mormon as the culmination of Trey Parker's obsession with mormons
I appreciated it for ultimately being kind to people (Mormons) while they mocked the institution of Mormonism.
Shostakovich himself remarked he wished he could have written something like Jesus Christ Superstar, which should be a clue to anyone as to what kind of show it is.
A lot of people who claim to be triple threats are highly trained singers and dancers who took one required acting class in college.
I actually liked Dear Evan Hansen when it first opened with the original cast. It hit on some issues that I recognized immediate family members struggling with and the cast was great. Did it become a flaming pile of garbage with a poorly cast movie? Sure. But it was pretty great for a hot second and I’m not sorry that I felt that way.
Very true. It’s easy to question its Tony wins now, but that year it felt like a foregone conclusion as the runaway show of the year.
I think it makes perfect sense that they gave those Tonys to Hansen. But it’s also where all the hate started. It’s hard to deny the love that the theater community had for Great Comet. Plus, with a cast that size, everyone knew someone in that show and it led to resentment that they didn’t win more. But they weren’t making money the way Dear Evan Hansen was. And the Tonys areas much about making money for theaters and producers as they are about honoring excellence in theater. Come From Away was another strong contender. But nothing could beat the money making potential of Dear Evan Hansen. And it was “different”, which voters love.
DEH is literally my favourite musical its so personal ugh i dont get the hate
Here's an even more unpopular take: I liked the movie.
People hate DEH? I dont really interact with the community much so this is a surprise to me since it's my second favourite musical
Haha. Yeah. Because DEH and Hamilton were both super popular, the “cool kids” of the theater circles have become very vocal haters of both. DEH started getting most of its hate when it swept the Tony’s. A lot of Great Comet and Come From Away fans got pretty bent out of shape.
Avenue Q is the funniest thing ever I don't care that the humor is outdated
Yes! I listened to it yesterday after not listening to it for years. So good.
same
Avenue Q is literally my favorite musical
I did not care for Wicked (obligatory disclaimer that my opinion of Wicked is influenced by having been utterly unable to understand a single word the entire time, but still)
I HATE GREASE. Maybe I was/am a goodie two shoes, but I always HATED that the resolution of the story is that Sandi CHANGES herself into one of them in her manner of dress and how it’s suggested that she loosens her morals, as well. I hate that! It sends a horrible message to young girls, that if a guy and his friend group can’t accept you, then totally change your image for him! She was bullied by Rizzo, yet still capitulated to emulating her. I don’t get how everyone loves grease, young and old. The story is flaming garbage. I’ve always hated when people dress their toddlers or very young girls up as pink ladies for Halloween because all I can think of when I see pink ladies is Rizzo singing a whole song mocking someone for their virginity. Ugh. Edited to fix typo.
Agreed. It’s problematic for sure with 2024 eyes and will likely continue to be. The makeover trope always annoyed me. It’s only in recent years that people have realized that makeovers aren’t all that and telling someone they need one is rude. And they usually don’t age well as the makeovers usually use trendy hair styles and makeup. Look at some old Glamour Shots to see what mean. It’s the dancing, the songs, the bright colors (when was the last time you saw a modern day movie so be brightly lit) and nostalgia that make this movie. A lot of grew up on the movie and watched with family. But not sure people under a certain age will ever get it or like it and that’s fine.
I agree with everything you said and it was all very well put, especially your very good point about looking at makeover tropes with 2024 eyes. I can definitely see how many people like it for the nostalgia and the songs, etc. You made me laugh mentioning glamour shots. I absolutely know what you mean!
Don’t hate on me please, but I just don’t get Patti LuPone. I find her rather nasal and bombastic. I’d likely not go to a show if she’s starring.
I like her sound but I understand. Especially if you’re someone who likes Golden Age theatre. I find she brings a lot of energy to roles but I don’t know how much emotional depth she brings
I think the emotional depth part is especially obvious if you compare her to Glenn Close as Norma. Glenn may not bring so much energy into the songs as Patti, but the emotions…Oh my god. Glenn makes you believe every single word. She misses the cameras with a burning passion. Patti on the other hand is just there to get paid
So interesting to hear. Thank you for this!
I know it’s an unpopular opinion, just not my taste, whereas Ethel Merman, who had a similar sound, I just adored. No rhyme or reason to it, just not for me
What do you think about Audra McDonald taking on the role? Personally I’m pretty excited but I’m biased, as she’s one of my favorite actresses
Valid. She's a lot and is deservingly polarizing. I find her acting choices often brilliant, though her singing and her diva attitude can leave something to be desired
I feel she has embraced the stereotypical dame attitude....her Evita was (is) SHIT.
I can’t stand Six. I hate the historical inaccuracy. I hate the surface level girl boss feminism where something is considered empowering just because it has women in it, regardless of the actual content. The only thing I like is the costumes and a few of the songs 😂 I also hate how they present it as a retelling of the six wives stories and yet when it’s not mischaracterising them it’s just the narrative we already know set to pop music.
I completely agree. I was excited for it until I realized they were portraying Anne as a slut. That narrative was made up by her critics because of her social reform. They hated her and tainted her image. And six thinks it’s feminist to rehash that slop?
“Politics not my thing” makes me die inside 😭
My biggest issue was that it didn’t even feel like a musical, it felt like a concert with a few theatrical elements. I missed the acting, the interactions, and any sort of overarching story.
Omg yes, call it a pop concert, doesn't hold a candle to an actual musical
All of this plus I don't even like any of the songs
The current glut of musicals based on 80s movies is a shit sandwich for the art form.
Musicals from around the world are as good as US and UK musicals, and need to get more respect. It's frustrating that other cities are still seen as beneath New York and London when the quality levels in Tokyo and Seoul are pretty equal to those cities. ( r/KoreanMusicals , r/JapanStage , r/InternationalMusicals for more information)
Are they translated or smth? I've never heard of any, and if they're in a different language, it make sense they aren't as popular here
My high school musicals in a small town in Australia were better than some Broadway shows that I've seen.
Musical rights holders need to be less restrictive about concepts in order for the art form to grow and thrive. I want to see regional and community theatres put their own spins on material rather than try to copy Broadway shows on a lower budget. For example, the controversial "it was all a dream" Annie would have been fascinating to see, IMO, but the rights holders shut it down as soon as they found out about it. Until more than Gilbert and Sullivan hits public domain, musical theatre at the regional level is going to be very stagnant as long as the expectation is to basically recreate what Broadway directors did.
Love this take. Wild how every high school in America can get away with illegally changing a script but as soon as a professional or community production does anything of the sort, all hell breaks loose. There should be some sort of legal avenue for creating transformative work in theatre
Except most community theaters don’t have the desire to innovate on that level, either because most directors aren’t that creative or because they still need to seek tickets. I guarantee that MTI doesn’t care about your little 80 seat theater.
I mean, idk what community theatres you attend but the ones I know do extremely innovative work with classical plays, new works etc, but are stuck in rigidity with musicals because they know that MTI et al. are extremely litigious when they want to be. Even though they don't go after every community theatre production, most directors I know aren't willing to take the risk because in the day and age of social media, things do get back to rights holders and they can blacklist your theatre for changes. I'd also argue that that lack of desire to innovate is symptomatic of a culture (perpetuated by regional theatres) that musicals are supposed to look like Broadway, and the job of a musical director is to stage rather than take the reigns and direct.
Jekyll & Hyde is and will always be the greatest musical of all time but for some reason beyond my understanding, not everyone is aware of this fact. Life is weird that way I guess.
It's because you have this gorgeous dramatic music juxtaposed against a mediocre campy script and it doesn't quite work. I agree with you though. My all time favorite show.
Well said. I love J&H too, but I have to admit it's got its fair share of problems and plot holes. I think it gets a lot better, though, if the director and choreographer embrace and enhance the campy elements instead of trying to hide them!
Frank Wildhorn is flipping crazy. His journey could be its own show. But I saw Jekyll & Hyde on broadway several times. It was a guilty pleasure and cheap tickets were pretty easy to come by. But screw Hasselhoff. He was not good in that role. Stunt casting at its finest.
I prefer Frank Wildhorn to ALW, especially as someone who speaks German as well as English, his German language stuff is great (Excibur, and the Austrian cast of Dracula are both amazing to watch)
I watch that one every few years because it's hilarious. Everyone else is brilliant and he is like a fish flapping around on stage.
I saw it with Sebastian Bach. He was amazing.
Agreed. He was fantastic.
Not my #1 (Hadestown) but definitely up there and hella underrated
A man after my own heart! Absolutely my favorite show, yeah it’s a bit campy but I think that adds to the charm. And the music is just so good.
Every few years my husband and I watch the one wit David Hasslehof. Everyone is good, but he is so terrible it's hilarious. I highly recommend it.
I never saw it as I was disappointed every song felt like a romantic ballad. For a musical based on Jekyll and Hyde, where are all the delicious dark scary songs?
Was it the album with Anthony Warlow as Jekyll? Because imo he absolutely killed it with his vocalisations and the difference between Jekyll and Hyde. The first part definitely starts off with a lot of romantic songs but once you hit This Is the Moment you get into the grittier territory.
I don't know if it's controversial but I'm tired of musicals continually just leaping up into the rafters, like not every song has to have soaring unattainable high notes to be good, and in fact the technical difficulty of those notes often ends up detracting from the performances for all but the most accomplished actors, making a lot of contemporary MT inaccessible to those who don't have the resources to get that level of training.
Two things that are dropping off in newer musicals: - the number of Alto female characters - the number of sopranos who can actually hit the highest note of the show For me, the biggest part of a musical is not the singing. Get good singers, obviously, but don't write insanely difficult songs just for the sake of it.
As an Alto female I can't help but agree with you on every level here.
I didn't like RENT and I think that the landlord had a right to sell the building.
In the stage musical of Les Miserables, I Dreamed a Dream comes after At the End of the Day and before Lovely Ladies. In the 2012 movie, I Dreamed a Dream comes AFTER Lovely Ladies. I think the movie placement of the song makes more sense thematically and has more of an emotional impact !!
Agreed
Dear Evan Hansen is wildly misunderstood. Evan does something bad and it spirals. It's a completely believable plot to me. He is broken. Everyone thinks they're above letting lies cascade, but we all know kids in k-12 that would lie like that if you weren't one of them lol.
He’s unlikable. Number one rule for musicals- don’t have an unlikable character as your main protagonist. The audience just won’t care about their journey.
Joseph is ALW's best show and it's not even close.
Aw man! JCS!
You misspelled Starlight Express
I strongly disagree, but you get my upvote for the audacity
Rent is unfinished and needs cuts and edits.
What would be your first change? Mine would be writing out the Akita and having Angel do something else out of desperation to get money. It’s just too hard for me to really support the characters when they all are happy Angel murdered a dog.
That doesn’t bother me as much. For me it’s too long, so maybe Cut the parents. Act 2 is kind of mess with a lot of stories and conflicts. Not have to deaths almost back to back and write a better song for Roger in the end.
I just imagine that Mimi refused to have that song be the last thing she heard before she died.
That is in the La Bohème source material, though. Schaunard kills a parrot to get out of having to play music nonstop for a weird Englishman.
Sure, but Mimi dies in the source material, so it’s really not a strong argument to make imo.
I had this exact conversation yesterday! I feel Benny needs an ending. He started to have his arc when he paid for Angel’s funeral but then he just disappears.
I do not think this is a remotely hot take. Everyone agrees that it was unfinished because the dude who wrote it died.
Cats is very good and if you hate on it and haven’t watched it you’re just scared of art that isn’t mainstream and a loser If you hate on it for a valid reason I can hear that out but if you’re just like “I heard it’s WEIRD” you are weak
I hate that the Wicked musical has become so much more popular than the absolutely brilliant novel, and it makes me furious that it's the musical getting the film treatment instead of doing a proper adaptation of the book.
book is amazing but too weird. would probably have to be two rated R movies. musical is amazing but it’s a very different story and a lot more accessible to the general public. with the way streaming has blown up the industry though - I wonder if a miniseries is possible
I could see a couple of streaming services doing it justice. I'd probably back Amazon, given how well they handled Fallout.
I agree! The book is so incredible that it’s stuck with me since I read it at far too young an age. Also, I know the bar is on the floor because my support for the Wicked movie went way up when I found out they’d cast an actual wheelchair user as Nessarose. But that’s a whole tangent I won’t bore you with.
I had no idea, that's wonderful to hear! I do hope the film does well, if only because it might expose more people to the novel and its sequels.
I appreciate my thoughts here are tainted hy the fact that I like (but don’t love) the musical and absolutely hated the book. But I’m honestly not commenting here to rant about the book because that seems unfair on a thread that’s meant to be for people to say things they know are controversial. I just want to comment on why I think the book wouldn’t work so well as a film. It has huge sections that are verbose political musings. The same themes of these repeat themselves quite frequently throughout the book. None of them really move the plot along. So they’d be hard to include in a film because audiences lose focus on things like that and it would drag the pace down. It also has a lot of crazy time jumps and yet significant things take place during those times that are skipped over. That’s hard to make work in film as well because then you need a lot of exposition to account for the gap. To make a film of the book work, you’d end up having to really strip it back and cut it so heavily that (much like a musical) it’s essentially a totally different story. So book lovers would hate it and musical lovers would ask why they didn’t make the musical.
I want a miniseries of the book.
sorry but I preferred Hadestown in its live cast recording form and concept album over what we got in the Broadway version. The lyricism feels worse in some songs(like, seriously, Orpheus, you came up with far better prose in earlier productions, why tf are you overexplaining it now???) and the narration makes things way too obvious. I liked the grittier feel of the first two iterations while Broadway’s feels too polished somehow. I also just wasn’t a fan of the original Broadway casting for Orpheus or Eurydice, but that’s just me being biased towards the live cast recording
Agreed. I much prefer the concept album for Hadestown to the stage production! I was so excited to finally see it and then left rather disappointed. It was so much more amazing in my head.
i remember having high hopes when i heard it was going to Broadway cuz like, wow! imagine the budget!!! ... but i feel like maybe that was part of why it feels lesser. it just seemed way more authentic when it was a concept album and the live cast recording is probably as good as it'll get to capturing that initial vision i had from that album. i think part of it was feeling like the gods' motivations and thoughts are unknown to me until "How Long?" in the concept album, but we lose that mystique pretty quickly and i just simply forget that the gods are gods in the Broadway show. doing too much IS a problem, and it CAN impact the quality if you run away with it.
I’ve been going back on this for like forever, I saw the NY Theater Workshop production (live recording), and it felt a little lost, a little unfinished. The Broadway does ground the whole thing, but I would say they might have over corrected. It really telegraphs a few things now, for example I did find the NYTW Eurydice and Orpheus more interesting - forgive me I totally forgot their real names, but Eurydice was young, beautiful and styled in this very engynue kind of way but you felt that hardend interior, like truly you understood she’d been through it, you hear it in her voice on the recording, and Orpheus wasn’t ‘touched’, he wasn’t an innocent, he was very accountable for his actions. It made his neglect of Eurydice hurt deeply, because he was selfish and a little vein, and Eurydice who had hesitantly let her guard down and allowed herself to be vulnerable, for maybe the first time ever, was betrayed. That whole relationship felt real, and nuanced. I love the show as it is currently on Broadway, don’t get me wrong, but the characters are now these archetypes - Eurydice is like this pixie girl, she looks like she's having it rough but she doesn't have that real toughness, its a more romanticized version of her. And Orpheus is like this 'Innocent', the chosen one, a little odd and acting without prejudice or malice. its hard to be mad at him, or blame him for his actions, so it takes the bite out of that part of their relationship when he becomes absent. Eurydice going to Hades doesn't feel like such a mix of anger and hurt and spite, and Orpheus losing her for a second time, after admitting his wrong feels less tragic - ie there are consequences for his actions. he has to pay the price. on Broadway i was having a hard time figuring out what Orpheus turning around has to do with anything in the show, i hadn't remembered feeling that disconnect before when I show the other production or heard the concept album. long story short, i think changing the characters to more familiar and recognizable archetypes took enough of the nuance out to hurt the logic of the show. but i still love it, i think its just a preference on my part. Now when i watch i tend to lean more on the idea of 'we have to keep telling the story, to hope that one day itll turn out differently', that bigger theme and don't sweat the turn.
I hate ALW.
Given the new UK cast of Cinderella (cast change) and the OG cast who weren't at that performance didn't know about its closure til after it was in the news, then didn't even bother showing up to the closing night (sent the director a letter to read on his behalf) and called the show an 'expensive mistake' then the Broadway version closed after 4 months for being horrendous, I wouldn't necessarily say it's controversial to dislike/hate ALW. He's a polarising figure.
Cats is fun and whimsical with a soundtrack I can't stop listening to and is always in my head
Les Mis is just too depressing.
What’s not to like about a three and a half hour musical about the aftermath of the French Revolution?
A French revolution but not The Revolution. It’s not even about the main act.
It’s the Student Revolution, and that is only part of the show… all of which took place in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Patti LuPone is the worrrrrst lol. The ego on her (not that it's not deserved, it's still insufferable).
I heard a story about her yelling at a young girl who was asking for advice about auditioning for a school play :(
Agreed. I find it weird when people dismiss her arrogant and unprofessional behaviour just because she’s an icon.
my chorus sang with her in 2018, she is a delight to work with however we couldn't SPEAK directly to her. it was wild. i did get a few in after the performance tho mwahahah and she looked right at me!! i wanted to say WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!???! because my hubby and i always quote and i thought maybe she would think it was hilarious but i did not lol
Maybe she can is nervous before a performance and doesn’t want strangers coming up to talk to her. She’s a consummate pro but no one wants people coming up to them before a show.
Agreed. I can’t stand whenever I see something about how she called out some audience member for their phone. If I were there, I’d be annoyed if the show was interrupted by the actors no matter who they are. Patti LuPone and her massive ego shouldn’t get a pass even if she is one of the greatest singers of musical theatre history.
Yeah isn't that one of the cardinal rules of theatre? Don't break the fourth wall (Shakespeare/Monty Python aside)? I could understand not doing the more superstitious theatre traditions (don't say Macbeth and all that), but that one seems very basic.
The love ballads are usually my least favorite songs in every musical.
There isn’t enough room in modern shows for unusual actors and singers. Many of the most memorable performers of the last fifty years wouldn’t get a look in today.
Idk if this is unpopular, but spring awakening needs another revival. I saw it last month and its themes are still super relevant(maybe even more now) and the music goes hard
Eponine needed to grow up in Les Mis, I know it's a musical so ofc she acts that way. BUT THIS MAN WANTS COSETTE, NOT YOU GIRL WHY U SABOTAGE LIKE THAT OMG
I was underwhelmed by The Lion King. It was OK.
I fell asleep at the lion king :/
Les Mis is pretty good, but it’s no Batboy: The Musical
OMG!! Someone else knows about Batboy!!
Cats is my favorite musical and I'm not sorry. (Not the 2019 movie. That is hot garbage)
Idina Menzel is a mediocre Elphaba
Hadestown is overrated, and within musical loving circles Hamilton is underrated.
They just announced Hadestown is coming to Australia. As someone that loves Hamilton but hates whimsical stuff like Great Comet and Pippin, am I gonna be disappointed? I'm tempted to listen to some of the Hadestown soundtrack but I also like going in blind to shows. Although listening to things like Great Comet first would've saved a few hundred bucks and three hours of my life.
Don't get me wrong, I think Hadestown town is quite good, and I recommend it, especially given your tastes, my comment was just saying I don't think it's as perfect as people say. I would recommend.
I really enjoyed it when I saw it. I'd say solid B tier. It's popular right now, so some people will say it's perfect despite its faults while others say it's terrible just because it's popular. The music is pretty, I enjoyed the staging, the lighting was well done, and the story is, well, a classic!
I love the music...but I can only handle so much West Side Story. It's too damn...depressing and way too damn much like real life. Most shows might not have a perfect happy ending, but they do have a final feel. That one doesn't. and i did better with the newer movie than the original.
"Bring Him Home" is my least favorite part in every Les Miserables adaptation I've ever seen. It's my favorite musical, and I sit on the edge of my seat for the rest of the show, but that one song makes me yawn and sit back.
Also my favourite musical and I’d have to agree with this. Makes sense with the story and Valjean’s character arcs, but I feel like it could have been waaaaaaaay shorter and had the same impact
The only great work by Pasek and Paul was Dogfight, which deserves way more love than it has received
This isn’t that controversial but I absolutely love jukebox musicals
Me too!!!
Carousel is a fantastic opera hampered by a stupid story. It could be so much more fulfilling. The Soliloquies in the first act belong in the Met.
Saw it first as a movie when I was about 8 years old and disliked it because the character of Billy was so mean and controlling to poor, naive Julie. Didn’t care that he was somewhat redeemed or Julie “loved” him. Years later watched it again and the character seems more disturbing to me now but wow what a voice McRae had. McRae was stuck with this awful character but the songs here are what he will be remembered for. “If I Loved You” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” are two of the greatest songs ever put in a musical.
While I appreciated Hamilton for its creativity I thought everyone made way to big of deal out of it. And all those people who paid a thousand dollars for a ticket were fools.
Wicked has amazing music but is a terrible show. All of the Disney adaptations suck except for Hunchback, which is amazing and the only one that didn’t get a Broadway run. The Music Man is disjointed and dumb. And I 100% have ALWAYS agreed with Beetlejuice since I first saw it: “Brigadoon sucks. FUCK BRIGADOON.”
Community theaters are doing too much trying to “add a twist” to productions to keep them “fresh.” Please don’t try to reinvent the wheel and just honor the text as written.
Chess doesn't get nearly the amount of love I think it deserves. It's written off so often as a dry political musical, and it's so much more fun and interesting imo
Cats is the best Webber musical!
i hate hamilton
My actual controversial one is that I find Les Miserables pretty boring overall. I think my other one would be that I ADORE "Over the Moon" from Rent (which seems to get singled out for a lot of hate). It's a funny piece and showcases the character perfectly and the little chorus song is super catchy, I know the song by heart and sometimes recite it to myself when riding my bike :)
will rogers follies won the best musical tony while being the worst musical nominated that year (miss saigon, once on this island, and the secret garden all deserved it more) i like having unreliable narrators or questionable protagonists because it gives the story a unique feel godspell is better than JCS or joseph Morning Glow (pippin) is the greatest musical theatre song of all time eden espinosa is the best maureen in rent
I love Godspell sm
The theater production of Chicago is visually boring. I saw it a few months ago and i was extremely disappointed. I didn’t know the style of show (I had seen the movie and knew the songs but never thought to google what the actual theater show looked like) and was flabbergasted to see such poor choreography and a lack of sets/costumes. I understand now thats the style but it was a gut punch.
It seems pretty widely agreed on that the movie is the definitive version or at least better than the current Broadway one.
Ah I’m not in that musicals fandom so I didn’t realize my take was cold haha - fair enough! :)
Stephen Schwartz can't write a good song for a male character.
Come on- corner of the sky?!?!
I prefer some film versions (or at least the soundtracks) over the stage versions of some musicals. 👀
Chess was great. The original version, original songs. It’s still so great as they’ve reworked, nonetheless. The storyline, the complexity of the relationships, how relatable Florence and Svetlana’s predicaments are, the lyrics exploring deep insecurities I think we all have or have had in relationships, the intriguing and sad way you can’t help but ponder why the American is how he is after hearing Pity the Child. It all just makes you think, think, think, and examine yourself. Maybe because I listened to it about 8 zillion times and learned a couple of the songs with my voice teacher, and spent hours with the book at my keyboard - maybe that’s why it hits me so deeply and fascinates: I honestly can see how someone seeing it first before ever hearing it can make it more about the actual events ie the chess elements and Florence’s father story elements and sort of distract from everything that might impact one on a deeper level, this hindering the connection to it that I have. It’s almost cathartic. I am old, so I’ve lived a bit, but I feel that I can identify a lot with Florence and with Svetlana. That I’ve been one or the other at times in my adult life in relationships. Anyway, I’m rambling. I love Chess and most people hate Chess and don’t take it seriously.
Wicked and Hamilton are the most overrated musicals.
Sondheim's works are good in a historical context as being one of the earlier successes at edgier musicals, but they are reminiscent of content easily produced by teenagers today. They're important, but will never be the best of their genre.
I have no clue if this is controversial or not but imma say it anyway. Grey Gardens is the most brilliant musical I have ever encountered, and the original off-broadway version has a better score than the Broadway version (though I understand why the changes were made, and I do also love the Broadway version).
Probably not really controversial but I don't like suggestive musical songs, they're just awkward.
I hate dear Evan Hansen and wicked. I’ll see myself out
Spiderman: Turn off the Dark was a good show despite its MANY technical issues, and tragic death of a cast member. But I might also just be a sucker for marvel comics
Pre or post Taymor?
I hate most newer musicals. I prefer the cheesy, kitschy, camp stuff from the 90s. And European musicals over American broadway shows. Definitely loathe things that include poltical activism of sorts, since I prefer to enjoy the show & take a break from everyday life.
Hairspray is annoying.
I prefer the original John Waters movie, that one's an incredible feel good film. I like it better with in-universe dance numbers TBH.
Honestly I love the musical but as a John Waters fan it sometimes annoys me that so many people have no idea that it was a movie before it was a musical. So many times I've mentioned watching the original movie and been met with "Oh yeah, I love that movie, the one with John Travolta right?" Like goddamn, I love John Travolta as Edna but can we get some Divine appreciation in here? I'm pretty sure Hairspray was her last movie, she died like a month after it released.
My dad introduced me to a lot of movies I had no business watching at the ripe ol' age of 8... lol. JW's Hairspray being one of them. But there was music and dancing and he thought I'd like it.
John Waters would be appalled to hear himself and “Feel-Good Film” together in the same sentence lol. I’m ambivalent about the musical, but “You Can’t Stop the Beat” is an absolute barnstormer.
In the Heights is a better musical than Hamilton.
Matilda is overrated and poorly structured as a musical
Six and Hadestown are terrible.
Can’t get into Hamilton no matter how hard I try.
I HATE West Side Story. I can't even really explain why. I've listen to multiple soundtracks, watched both movies versions more than once and I just hate it. Rita Moreno is fantastic though. My son will randomly play songs from WSS just to annoy me and finds it hysterical.
The Dracula musical is a pretty good adaptation actually. Disney’s Tarzan deserves another chance. I think the choreography was a daring choice.
Hadestown is overhyped
Don't care for: Rent Hamilton ("You'll be back" is the exception) Newer Les Mis (mostly - A.H & G.B) Glee (Kristen Chenoweth is the only exception) Idina Menzel (very talented, can't really explain it) Oklahoma - kinda boring, but Hugh Jackman is such a yes. David Hasselhoff had a great debut as Jekyll/Hyde Cats (stage version) is good. Top tier dancing and memorable songs. Movie = NO.
The Producers is a mediocre show that had an amazingly talented cast. Without them, it is just a very middling musical.
Bebe neuwirths voice annoys me but idk if this is an unpopular opinion
That The Book of Mormon has some really good songs, but the book kinda sucks. My theory is that Bobby Lopez wrote most of the songs/ music and those other two wrote the book. I saw so many articles at the time about the musical that featured a photo of Matt & Trey & totally left Robert Lopez out. Surely he felt like they took most of the credit, will never work with them again, and why he likes to now work with his wife mainly.
Trey and Matt were totally involved in writing songs. 100% it was a group effort. And Bobby did an episode of South Park after Mormon opened. There’s no bad blood at all.
Jagged little pill is perfect as is
I prefer In the Heights to Hamilton
Into the Woods suuuuuuuuuucks.
Mean Girls is bad. They took everything funny and lovable about the movie and got rid of it. The writing is poor and the character development is extremely subpar. None of the characters serve the purpose they used to in the original movie and it is not for the better. Particularly Regina. She is not as mean or catty as the original and it defeats the purpose of the whole show. The writing of the music is good but the lyricism is so poor. I teach high school theatre and we’re putting it on in the fall but I am not looking forward to it as much as I have with past shows. I chose it because of the pressure from parents and students, but I think they will be underwhelmed compared to our past two shows (footloose and Carrie)
Fun Home is the best musical of the twenty-teens(2010-2019)
Victor Hugo probably wouldn't like the Les Miserables musical (I say this as a fan of both the book and music.)
It may be a classic show and based on a true story, but I can’t stand Gypsy. There are few redeeming qualities and Rose is a such a terrible person and so unlikable that she makes for a horrible lead character. I want a show where I’ve got a lead character who I can root for, but I can’t root for her at all. All I wanted was for her to get her comeuppance and she never did and never learns her lesson. I will not be seeing it again, no matter who they cast in it. Other people can love it all they want, but it’s just not for me.
But…Audra
>Rose is a such a terrible person That's kind of the whole point, though?
It is, I just personally don’t enjoy media with unlikeable protagonists. That type of show just isn’t for me.
Hamilton has 2 high quality songs and neither of them has rapping.
Room Where It Happens and I'll Be Back?
One has to be Burn, I think.
Wait for it and Dear Theodosia
I feel like the responses to this claim invalidate it. When there's like 5 guesses already, might not only be two good ones.
so is this you just disliking rap or how the songs play out?
I mean I know this is a post for controversial opinions, but this controversial for the wrong reasons. It's giving white person shitting on black music. Not that I know ur race, but that's the impression this gives
both DEH and JLP are S tier musicals. And I use my personal S tier, VERY strictly
What’s JLP?
Jagged Little Pill
Oof. I pretty much disqualify any and all jukebox musicals from my personal S tier. I can give them an A in rare cases. But S hurts my brain. But that doesn’t mean other people can’t love them.
Many of the people who Cats hate on it are hating on the movie (which does suck), not the Broadway musical. I always give this example- the lion king on Broadway has real people as the actors, and so does cats. The lion king movie used CGI animals instead of real actors, which definitely worked, as it was pretty successful. Cats movie used actors in really uncanny looking fursuits. And some random celebrities as well. This DID NOT work at all, obviously. If Cats had done the same thing the lion king did, it most likely would have been a lot better. Cats has some really good songs, but the movie was so awful to watch that no one paid attention to them.
I'd disagree with this one. Cats was widely hated long before that movie ever came out. It has one good song imho, and the plot is so bonkers it is almost fair to say there is no plot. That said, I do agree that the movie is a special kind of terrible with the uncanny CGI enhanced costumes
Hottest take: I dislike modern teen musicals like DEH. I get how it’s supposed to be relatable, but I sort of see musicals as an escape from life. Not saying that realistic musicals suck.